This DVD presents seminal works of music, performance, dance, theater and installation art from the nearly 50-year history of Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (HOK). When HOK founder Sonja Henie exclaimed that she wanted the Beatles to play at her art center, in essence she expressed its founding ambition to produce and stage a lively cross-artistic program that captured the contemporary spirit of the day in live form. This release is filled with previous unreleased material from HOKs history, and shows for the first time Kjartan Slettemark dressed up as a poodle in 1975, Mauricio Kagels commisioned piece EX-POSITION from 1978, and the brilliant recording of John Cage reading Muoyce in 1983.

"And now we take the first step into the future." Former director Ole Henrik Moe added this bold statement when HOK opened its doors to the public in 1968. The museum of the future at Høvikodden would position dynamic time-based art alongside its collection of modernist masterworks of paintings and sculpture ,demonstrating how the various forms art elaborate and collaborate with each other. Instead of expanding its art collection, the majority of HOK’s budget would go to events and exhibitions, to the production of new time-based works, and not least, to document ephemeral art.

I Want the Beatles to Play at My Art Center! presents a small selction from Henie Onstad Kunstsenters videoarchives. The DVD contains a newly restored version of Pål Bang-Hansens promotional feature A Forum of the Arts from 1969 where amongst others Arne Nordheim performs his commisioned work for HOK Solitaire. For the first time one can see how the Norwegian Studio for Electronic Music looked like in 1975 and view an excerpt from Terje Rypdals opera Orfeus vender seg og ser på Eurydike. In addition the DVD contains more recent productions with artists like MoHa!, KILLL, Stephen O`Malley and Christopher Nielsen/Masselys.

This release accompanies the exhibition I Want the Beatles to Play at My Art Center! – Tidsbasert kunst ved HOK 1968-2011 opening October 28th at HOK with performances by Deathprod and Nils Bech. In relation the book Mot det totale museum is published by Forlaget Press together with a 2LP on Prisma Records. The exhibition and releases are curated by Lars Mørch Finborud.

This 2LP presents seminal works of music from the nearly 50-year history of Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (HOK). When HOK founder Sonja Henie exclaimed that she wanted the Beatles to play at her art center, in essence she expressed its founding ambition to produce and stage a lively cross-artistic program that captured the contemporary spirit of the day in live form. This release is filled with previous unreleased material recorded at HOK by artists such as Jim O`Rourke, Deathprod, Arne Nordheim, Soft Machine, John Cage and Jenny Hval.

"And now we take the first step into the future." Former director Ole Henrik Moe added this bold statement when HOK opened its doors to the public in 1968. The museum of the future at Høvikodden would position dynamic time-based art alongside its collection of modernist masterworks of paintings and sculpture, demonstrating how the various forms art elaborate and collaborate with each other. Instead of expanding its art collection, the majority of HOK’s budget would go to events and exhibitions, to the production of new time-based works, and not least, to document ephemeral art.

I Want the Beatles to Play at My Art Center! presents a small selection from HOKs vast sound archives. For the first time one can hear excerpts from Kåre Kolberg and Paal-Helge Haugens commisioned work Rekviem for Janis Joplin from 1972, Håkon Kornstad improvising in 2012, Hal Clark playing the legendary Buchla-synthesizer in The Norwegian Studio for Electronic Music in 1975, and Soft Machine at its prime in 1971 with Robert Wyatt on drums. The LP also contains commisoned works by Jenny Hval, Deathprod, Lasse Marhaug and Jim O`Rourke, all produced by HOK over the last years. Other artists represented on the 2LP are Bjørn Fongaard, The Aller Værste!, Svein Finnerud Trio, Sigurd Berge and Spontaneous Music Ensemble.

This release accompanies the exhibition I Want the Beatles to Play at My Art Center! – Tidsbasert kunst ved HOK 1968-2011 opening on October 28th at HOK with performances by Deathprod and Nils Bech. In relation to the exhibition the book Mot det totale museum is published by Forlaget Press, together with a DVD on Prisma Records. The exhibition and releases are curated by Lars Mørch Finborud.

onsdag 17. oktober 2012

Wreckage presents a collaborative work jointly composed by Oren Ambarchi and James Rushford (originally commissioned for the Ultima Contemporary Music Festival at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter and premiered by Ensemble Neon) for their own instruments (piano and electric guitar) and a small chamber ensemble, performed here by an ensemble of leading lights in Melbourne’s experimental and new music communities. Rushford’s piano gently ushers the listener though a series of tonally ambiguous environments, building up unified textures through irregular iterations of small melodic and harmonic units. While the integration of Ambarchi’s spectral processed guitar (which gradually climbs to the foreground as the piece progresses) with the acoustic instrumentation recalls the late works of Luigi Nono, and the way the timbral lushness of the chamber group is tempered by never resolved harmonic tension seems to draw on Feldman’s work of the early 1970s, Wreckage also gestures towards the melancholic, intuitive minimalism of Luciano Cilio and Giusto Pio and the wandering melodicism of Aldo Clementi. The lushness of the instrumental textures employed and hints of almost-direct melodicism ensure the piece is approachable and immersive; but the ever-shifting harmonic foundations and complex interplay between voices ensures that it remains somewhere beyond the listener’s grasp, in a paradoxical state of simultaneous movement and stasis.

onsdag 22. august 2012

This 2LP is a reissue of the holy grail of Norwegian free-jazz and electronic music, Popofoni, released by Sonet in 1973. It features compositions by Arne Nordheim, Terje Rypdal, Kåre Kolberg, Gunnar Sønstevold and Alfred Janson played by an extended Jan Garbarek Quintet.

The Popofoni-project was initiated after a heated debate on Haagen Ringnes’ TV-show Åpen Post in autumn 1969, which dealt with the subject popmusic. Standing on one side you found the defenders of pop, actress and singer Elisabeth Grannemann, comedian and record producer Rolv Wesenlund and artist and record label owner Arne Bendiksen – who defended his 1969 Eurovision winner Oj oj oj så glad jeg skal bli. In the other corner was the “cultural elite” represented by literature researcher Erling Nielsen and pianist and Beethoven-expert Amalie Christie. Both sides expressed grave concerns about that their opponent’s music impaired their listeners abilities. During the broadcast, Grannemann performed a parody of an avant garde-composition which included throwing dishes and yelling, with direct reference to composer Arne Nordheims music. Some weeks later Nordheim picked up the handkerchief and responded by composing a pop song with avant garde qualities, Solar Plexus, performed by an expanded Jan Garbarek Quartet. Because of the great media attention this quarrel attracted, the organization Ny Musikk (IRCM) and Henie Onstad Kunstsenter decided to ask the experimental composers Kåre Kolberg, Alfred Janson, Gunnar Sønstevold, Terje Rypdal and Arne Nordheim to write new compositions in the meeting point be- tween pop and avant garde – hence the name Popofoni.

The result was performed at a concert at the art centre in april 1970 and later documented on a double LP release on Sonet in 1973. It was pressed in 500 copies, and is now one of Norway’s rarest records.

This reissue is produced by Lars Mørch Finborud and Lasse Marhaug for Prisma Records, 2012. The release comes in a limited edition of 500 copies,

Kåre Kolberg (b.1936) is one of Norway’s foremost contemporary composers and is regarded as one of the pioneers of early electronic music and cross-disciplinary art in Scandinavia. He has composed music for film, theatre and chamber orchestras to jazz acts such as Svein Finnerud Trio and Jan Garbarek. This LP contains three early electronic pieces by Kolberg and comes in a limited edition of 300 copies.

NOVA

The electronic tape composition Nova was made by Kåre Kolberg for the visual artist Anders Kjær’s multimedia-installation of the same title, exhibited at Henie Onstad Art Centre between 2–22 of august in 1972. The installation included a specially designed light-show and music playing from tapemachine in a loop – blended together with a huge 13x19 meter installation consisting of glass, rubber tires and piles of paper that the audience could walk through. Nova dealt directly with contemporary society’s destruction of nature and the glooming environmental threats of the 70s. It is regarded as one of Norway’s first examples of installation art. The sound was recorded in Polish Radio Experimental Studio in Warsaw, with the help of technician Bogdan Mazurek. The Polish Radio Experimental Studio was founded by Józef Patkowski in 1957. Kolberg was not the only Norwegian to use it; Arne Nordheim also went there to record his electronic music, including the famous Solitaire, which was presented at the opening of the Henie Onstad Art Centre in 1968.

Omgivelser

Omgivelser (Enviroments) was a commissioned piece made for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) in 1970. It was composed as a soundtrack for a short film directed by Jan Horne. The idea was to melt abstract film impressions that showcased different sides of the environmental debate of the 1970s, together with experimental electronic music in order to create a singular expression. This piece was also recorded in Studio Eksperymentalne in Warsaw, together with sound engineer Bohdan Mazurek. Kolberg crafted the piece using the studio’s vast sound archives and two pre-recorded tapes. One tape consisted of different recordings Kolberg had made with jazz singer Karin Krog, and the other different field recordings by Kolberg, including Norwegian nursery rhymes sung by Kolberg’s oldest son. In the studio the material was treated with ring modulators and different filters. The result was broadcast in 1970. Since the standard TV-volume levels at the time were so low-fidelity, the dynamic range of Kolberg’s piece didn’t come out right. Kolberg therefore over the years re-presented the piece several times at various concerts.

KEISERENS NYE SLIPS

The title translates to The Emperor’s New Tie. This piece was composed and recorded in 1973 at EMS (Electronic Music Studios) in Stockholm, using a PDP 15/40 computer. It was programmed in the EMS-1 computer language developed in the same studio. Keiserens nye slips was commissioned by Fylkingen, Stockholm.

søndag 8. januar 2012

The score of my auditive work is visual tone films, visual tone art; colour and curvilinear tones in changing spatial constellations. Tonality has been developed historically through many years, but provided an important impulse already in spring 1952 when I took part in a group of art and music students from Bergen invited to the city of Vienna as guests. Thus, we also were guest students at the Art Academy in Vienna at that time at a high artistic level. At the same time as the Viennese art museums gave us a thorough introduction to its collection, our meeting with Vienna's music were equally important.

In autumn 1952 I started at age 17 in the painting class at the National College of Art (SHKS), Oslo. Directly adjacent to SHKS was the Art Museum, where I had access to its unique art literature library. It was a collection with an international range, including the contemporary. It gave me a lasting inspiration to study the colour and curvilinear tones of visual art. Another, and neglected, source of inspiration occurred in the school canteen, where I met an active student environment from the Oslo School of Architecture.

The road to the auditory tone world is short, eg specifically, through concrete music. In 1952 Pierre Schaeffer and his Group on Concrete Music started a development project. Two years later, 1954, it was performed at the SHKS, Oslo, in the school auditorium. This electro-acoustic music, which makes use of natural sounds, often converted electronically, is closely related to film and visual arts. For this reason, French composers and filmmakers collaborated in the Group on Concrete Music. Jon Medböe, arts theorist and musicologist at the SHKS, enriched our art scene with his insightful lectures on the boundaries between art forms. He also opened up our attention to concrete music.

After studying at SHKS (1952-1955) and the National Art Academy, Oslo (1958-1960), I started an intense development with various forms of sound art. The first visual tone concert was launched in Bergen Art Museum, 1965. The following year, under the auspices of New Music, I perfomed another concert at the Munch Museum in Oslo. Parallel to the concerts I composed pictorial tone works for television and cinema. It was, at the same time, breaking and not breaking with musical tradition.

Visual art and the artist's freedom and human presence has always been musical language, colour and line. On the surface we find external content presenting as a mask - eg. the art of the later Rembrandt can also be regarded as a tonal work, with the simple surface structure blurred and lifted into a free rhythm and balance between accented light and shadowy tones, the colours of their overtones ubiquitous. It is in this context one must see the goal I set for myself - a visual tone art, in which line and colour, alone or in interaction with the auditive - the specific sound structures and their electronic transformations - may meld with musics other formal languages. Tone Art in space and time include inner and outer reality.

These issues, outlined above, was part of the philosophy I presented in 1964 to the composer Arne Nordheim and the art historian Ole Henrik Moe. Respecting each other's disciplines, we started a collaboration that led to the work Evolution. After agreeing on the composition structure, I played my part of the work at the NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation). Nordheim received a copy of the recording, then working on the basis of his own world of sounds. The electronic music was recorded in Warsaw, Poland. In its compound form the work was completed in 1966, and was broadcast in the spring of 1967. Later it turned out that this was the first time that television was used as an independent visual artistic expression.

In 1967 I started a new collaborative project, this time with composer Björn Fongaard and choreographer Edith Roger. It led to Relief (as in sculpture), a visual tone ballet for NRK Television Theater. Relief was the thematic basis. It was a close and intense cooperation between all involved in the project. The NRK studio team showed immediate openness to our artistic goals, and our demands. In 1968, Relief was broadcast by NRK-TV. That same year, German television showed a visual ballet of Otto Piene. When the two works were submitted, it was the second time television was used as a medium for direct expression of visual art.

In parallel with the collaboration with composers I created my sound structures / music based on the visual arts. My visual tone works are scores for the auditory: sine tones, specific sound structures, acoustic instruments, and voice and breathing, as sound sources. All of it subsumed under electronic transformations. The auditive and the visual field share a common tonal space. The painter Björg Lödöen and I often recorded the audio for a number of my visual tone films, where the association with colour and curvilinear tones is the supporting force. This includes Kinetic Energy (1967-1968), Vision (1969), Structures (1970), Actio (1980) and Northern Lights (1991).

Through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s I composed pictorial tone works for television. At the same time I worked with film for cinema and exhibitions. In the years from 1964 to 1970 I held visual tone concerts in Oslo, Bergen, Copenhagen and Paris.

Seen in retrospective

In the late 1950s the artistic and technical issues underpinning my visual and auditive tonal language had been established, leading to the development of electronic instruments for image and sound. The instruments for image tones were the precondition for my auditive work. The first pictorial instrument was a prototype. It had control over the colour frequencies regardless of tonal dynamics. In this context, the leader of the Christian Michelsen Institute, Helmer Dal, played an important role. With his background from World War II developing radar in the United Kingdom he immediately grasped the idea of an instrument based on colour frequencies. Thanks to Dal and his technicians my prototype got a crucial boost, and later they were to follow me during my first two visual tone concerts in Bergen.

It began with a concert for the board of the Bergen Art Museum, 1965. The concert opened up a further artistic and technical development of visual tone art, and its dissemination in various media. Bergen Bank, with its director Sjur Lindebrekke, was of vital importance economically, while Norwegian Film led by its director Erik Borge and NRK´s television director Otto Nes assured the practical conditions allowing my art to become part of film and television media.

The Norwegian Council for Cultural Affairs invited me to hold a visual tone concert for the Council's board at The Norwegian Academy of Science in Oslo. Director Erik Borge gave a lecture about the film and about visual tone art before the concert. After the concert, the director of the Council, painter Haakon Stenstadvold, turned to me and said: "Will you go abroad?" I replied, "My application to the Council was for a development project, technically and artistically, for my musical language." Stenstadvold responded immediately, "I asked you if you will travel abroad." When none of the other board members said something, I realized there was no place for a question here but a matter of answering yes or no. So I said yes. Stenstadvold said: "We cannot risk building a fiddle in Norway, whilst other European countries might already have pianos." In other words, it was to be as he had said!

With the travel budget commissioned by the Council divided into three, there were to be three trips around Europe, reporting to our embassies in the respective countries. After each trip, I also had to deliver a report to the Arts Council in Norway, meeting with Stenstadvold at his office, which was also his studio at the time he was the dean of the SHKS.

As the Norwegian Council made me their envoy - on behalf of the Norwegian government - I met with open doors everywhere. There were many studio visits including at Le Parc´s, who had won the great painting prize at the Venice Biennale. He and his colleagues lived in old abandoned craft workshops in Paris. The economic foundation of artistic activity did, however, not compare with his fame and glory, forcing him to sell off reflector parts from his light reliefs as independent "art". For the market they were "art objects".

Later, I was a guest at Philips in Eindhoven, Holland. Philips had their main base there, in an egg-shaped exhibition building supposed to represent a vision for the future of electronics. The French artist Nicolas Schöffer had received a commission, with his light sculpture technique, in order to give the exhibition a flight of fantasy. When I later visited Schöffer in Paris at his studio, he believed that his art had been abused by Philips, warning me against signing a contract with the company.

My conclusion after my travels for the Norwegian Council of Cultural Affairs was that the belief that everything would be so much better out in the "big world" was a mere illusion. We so often tend to forget that art in Renaissance Italy, the Baroque in Holland, and the art research of Bauhaus did, in fact, occur in small and medium sized urban communities.